What a difference a day makes! When our youngest child turned 18 last month, our calendar marked the simple change of one day to another, but it marked a large change in our lives. Today is the first Mother’s Day in 35 years that we have no minor children.
It’s a day I knew was coming, but it is hard to believe it is actually here. Having children over 18 doesn’t mean one stops mothering, but lots of things change when a child reaches adulthood — or at least the age of majority.
Although New Hampshire’s current age of majority is 18, it changed from 21 only in 1973. Before that, the common law rule was that a person was a minor until the age of 21. In New Hampshire, a person who has reached his 18th birthday is declared to be of majority for all purposes, except as prohibited by the constitutions of New Hampshire and the United States.
That’s an official way of saying that there are exceptions. Turning 18, in some ways, is “pseudo” adulthood. Having brought nine children to that land of pseudo-adulthood (age 18 till 21), it’s obvious that in our laws we really haven’t defined what an adult is.
Here’s a list of some of the things my daughter could suddenly do without parental consent when the calendar turned from April 13 to April 14: get married, buy cigarettes, get a tattoo, get a driver’s license without having to complete driver education, buy tobacco products and e-cigarettes, buy a lottery ticket, execute her own durable power of attorney for health care, and join the military. I’m proud to say that on her birthday, she exercised her newfound opportunities by registering to vote and getting a membership in the Hanover Co-op — very adult things to do.
At 18, suddenly her signature meant something. In the blink of an eye, I went from being responsible for her medical information to being excluded from seeking details. Being 18 means signing lots of forms for yourself, but doesn’t necessarily mean you suddenly understand all the ramifications of what you are signing.
Clearly, age 18 is significant, but it isn’t everything. No one in New Hampshire can buy alcohol until they are 21. When the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1971 with the passing of the 26th Amendment, many states brought their minimum drinking ages down to 18, too. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 was the catalyst that brought drinking ages back up to 21. Today 45 states have exceptions to allow underage consumption of alcohol under certain circumstances, but New Hampshire isn’t one of them. This doesn’t mean 18-year-olds became more mature in 1971 in some states and not others, it just reflects the arbitrariness of age-related laws.
Some bills under consideration in New Hampshire reflect that ambiguity. Current laws allow males 14 or over and females 13 or over but under 18 to marry with parental and judicial consent. Same-sex marriage laws require both participants to be 18 or older. A move to make the marriage age uniformly 18 and above has been tabled indefinitely.
HB 640, a marijuana bill making its way through the Legislature, illustrates the matter even better: For the same marijuana possession offenses, it has three different sets of consequences — for under age 18, for 18 and over but less than 21, and for 21 and over!
Obviously, maturity doesn’t happen all at once at a certain age — it’s a process. Although we mark different stages of development with bar mitzvahs, quinceañeras, confirmations and graduations, these are simply markers of transition to, but not arrival at, adulthood.
Adulthood, perhaps, is more a state of mind than an age. There are people under 18 who show great maturity and “act like an adult.” There are people who after many years don’t act like adults at all sometimes. There doesn’t seem to be a single moment when one is an adult. Perhaps the ambiguities in our laws are an accurate reflection of reality.
Society can only define a life stage so far; individuals still have to do a lot of the defining themselves. Author and self-described “person of the internet” Arden Rose, talking about her book Almost Adulting, says you are an adult “when you feel like you have taken responsibility and owned it.” Kelly Williams Brown, author of the book Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps, breaks down the lessons she’s learned about adulthood into three categories: “taking care of people, taking care of things, and taking care of yourself.”
Julie Beck, in a January 2016 Atlantic Monthly article, When Are You Really an Adult?, writes that of all adulthood’s many responsibilities, the one most often cited as transformative is parenthood. It’s not that you can’t be an adult unless you have kids, but for an overwhelming number of people, the real moment of growing up and being adult is having children.
If becoming an adult is a process, being a mother is a process, too. Lots of books are written about caring for a newborn, raising a toddler and parenting a teen, but little is written about how to be a parent to adult children. As children get older, the more their choices become more important, with more consequences — and the less a parent is involved. Sometimes it’s hard watching from the sidelines.
Our children will always be our children, even when they are no longer children. A program on the local Christian radio station recently gave some advice for parents of adult children, based on Ephesians 4:25-32 in the Bible: speak truth, be passionate, don’t steal (your child’s freedom as an adult), stop yelling, give grace and be kind.
That’s good advice for moms as children become adults. And one of the best presents adult children can give to mothers is to act like adults, showing that all the training, counseling, hoping and praying has borne good fruit.
Margaret Drye lives in Plainfield.